Last year after returning home from my first Swanwick experience I wrote about the post-Swanwick blues. I was bracing myself for the same deflated feeling this year but actually I’m feeling something else. The post-Swanwick boost. I did wonder whether attending again as a fully fledged delegate (after being privileged enough to receive a subsidised… Continue reading Post-Swanwick Boost

I have been working hard at building up my writing habit. Sometimes I’ll have a good run of writing every day. And sometimes…like recently, I’ll have a day of not writing which turns into a week and then a month. But, while I still don’t manage to write every day, I am writing much more… Continue reading Quitting social media. Did my writing benefit?

I realised I haven’t uploaded a blog at all in 2018. Whoops. But, rather than chastise myself I’m going to take it as a sort of positive, because it’s a reflection of the fact I’ve been focusing more on my creative writing. Woohoo. My writing year has got off to a positive start in a… Continue reading Building up a regular writing habit

I’ve just sat down to write a blog post about my recent tough writing patch. About how a busy work and life period has left me unable to scrape the barrel of my mind for any words or stories. Even writing this post seems like a daunting task right now. I know, maybe a profound… Continue reading Help. I’ve run out of ideas. I’ll never write again.

A few weeks ago I received an email with the subject ‘WINNER!’. Like any intelligent email user, I immediately dismissed this as spam until… I noticed the sender: Zeroflash. It turned out I had been selected as the winner of September’s Zeroflash competition. What!? And they wanted me to judge next month’s competition. What what!?… Continue reading What I learned from judging a flash fiction competition

We’ve all heard of the back-to-work blues. Well I’ve got a serious case of it. More specifically, the post-Swanwick blues. Until a few months ago I had never even heard of the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School. Fast forward to June and a lovely email arrived in my inbox to say I’d been accepted onto this… Continue reading Post-Swanwick blues